Are you using a vocal sound that’s not only disempowering but may be costing you a promotion at work? This vocal sound is a current vocal trend, and it’s taking the world by storm. It’s been around for a little while, but it seems to be getting more prevalent these days.

The sound is called vocal fry, and it sounds like this.

This is vocal fry. It sounds very low in pitch and a little bit constricted. The vocal folds are actually working very thickly and floppily and not connecting properly and making a very strange sound.

And as you can hear, it doesn’t sound like a normal speaking voice. But here’s the interesting thing. When you’re speaking with vocal fry, you will be perceived by other people as being maybe completely different to who you actually are.

At Long Island University in New York, they decided to do a study to see how many people on campus, young women, college-age students were actually using vocal fry in everyday speech. Out of the women that they surveyed between the ages of 18 and 26, two-thirds of the women were using vocal fry on a daily basis during their speech.

They decided to take this study a little bit further again and find out how vocal fry is being perceived by other women and by other men, adults and teenagers alike. So they went worldwide with this study. They had 800 men and women surveyed online all over the world to find out how we’re perceived when we hear somebody speaking with vocal fry.

The subjects had to say two sentences, the same sentence but done in two different ways. I’m going to show you the two different ways that they made sound. The first way was with vocal fry, and the sentence was this. “Thank you for considering me for this opportunity. Thank you for considering me for this opportunity.”

You can see that that’s clearly not a clear, projected, confident, speaking sound. That’s vocal fry. I’m going to say it again in a normal speaking voice. “Thank you for considering me for this opportunity. Thank you for considering me for this opportunity.”

Out of 800 people that were surveyed, 86% agreed on these things.

They heard and perceived something very different in the people that were speaking with a normal speaking voice. They said that these people sounded educated, competent, trustworthy, attractive, appealing and a perfect job candidate for promotion. 86%.

On the other side of the coin, they found that the people who spoke with vocal fry were the exact opposite. They found that they sounded uneducated. They sounded absolutely not competent. They sounded insecure. They didn’t sound trustworthy. They didn’t sound attractive or appealing, and they certainly wouldn’t have offered them a promotion or the job, just because of the way that they’re producing sound.

And we have 100% control over the way that we’re producing sound.

So, do you want to sound competent and confident and trustworthy and appealing and knowing that when you are speaking to people, that you’re going to be seen as a great job candidate or a candidate for promotion?

Surely, that’s what you want if you’re climbing up that corporate ladder. And here’s the kicker, women who were listening to women speaking with vocal fry perceived them to be insecure, underconfident, not trustworthy and unappealing.

So women are judging other women with vocal fry to be less than. It doesn’t sound confident. Now men, it doesn’t bother them so much, but it bothers other women. So here’s something that you businesswomen need to consider when you’re going for a job interview. If you are being interviewed by another woman, make sure you never use vocal fry, because it won’t turn out well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the post today. It was all about vocal fry, and you know that you can eliminate it any time you need. If you need a vocal coach, I’m your go-to girl. I’ll see you next time.